I picked up a copy of Quicken last year to help with our family’s personal finances and perhaps assist in the accounting of my fledgling little business. This year, Quicken has released yet another version update, Quicken 2009 is slated for a September 10th release, and offered some handsome discounts for those looking to upgrade or use the software for the first time.

Quicken 2009 New Features

I’ve read people talk about how they hated all these yearly updates because they offered little in upgrades. Well, in scouring the web for more information, I stumbled on this job posting in which Intuit, makers of Quicken, is “planning a major redesign of the product, and we are looking for a senior user interaction designer for 6-9 month.” Who knows what that means though.

There are additional portfolio planning features added, a whole new help system (with screens for each page), as well as adding more banks to its system. Quicken 2009 will now interface with over 6,000 institutions from banks to brokerages to PayPal.

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Richard: One major feature is that if you’re running Quicken 2006, as of mid-April your online features will cease to work unless you upgrade to a newer release. There are only so many things a product like Quicken can do – eventually you start to run out of features you can add.

My father & I only upgrade every 3 years – when Intuit “sunsets” support for whatever version we’re running at the time.

I recently upgraded to the latest Quicken 2009 Deluxe from the 2008 version. I couldn’t really find anything online that made me want to upgrade, except I saw some screen shots of portfolio analysis based on sector weighting that I was very interested in. So, I shelled out the $70 to upgrade. Turns out, that not only did they move things around so it’s hard to find stuff, they completely removed functionality. For example, I use the tax planner pretty extensively, to model stock option grant sales and things like that. I was pretty annoyed that this was gone. It’s possible that this will be re-added in a service release, as there’s tabs and things for the tax planner, it’s just not there yet.

I come to find out that the one feature I really wanted (the portfolio analysis stuff) was only available as part of the online features I already had in 2008 – I just had never known about them or used them.

Regardless of that, if I had not already owned 2008, I would’ve been reasonably satisfied with this version. I use Quicken daily and I highly recommend it overall, even just for personal finance. You might want to see if you can find a reduced 2008 edition around, or perhaps wait until the 2009 edition’s bugs are fixed before jumping in.

Thanks, Richard. I’m going to search for a cheap 2008 edition. I’ve been wanting to try it, but didn’t want to spend the money if it was going to be overly complicated for my personal finances. Thanks again for the advice!

I’ll start by saying I LOVE Quicken. LOVE IT. I use it for all of my family finances after realizing that my own spreadsheets were nice, but were too much work to maintain and my wife hated my receipt hording. They should use that for advertising “Quicken: It Saves Marriages”. You heard it here first from me! haha

I recently made the switch to ’09 from ’06, because, as mentioned by another user, Intuit stops supporting older versions after several years. I’ve gotta say, I’m not too impressed with all the changes. The interface is a little prettier, but I’d take something that was easier to understand and not quite as good looking.

Also, from a functionality standpoint, it’s not as reliable as I’d really hoped it would be. The update manager doesn’t interface well with my banks (granted, they’re local banks) and it’s more unreliable than ’06 with the American Express. Sometimes I’ll have to update twice to get the data. Specifically with my local bank, it says it’s updated but hasn’t downloaded a thing. I just end up logging into my accounts online and download the data. Tried and true!

I’d also hoped for an easy way to switch out some of the graphs and reports on the summary pages with my own with the option of restoring the default graph or report. I know it’s only several clicks away, but it’d still be nice. It’d also be nice to be able to left click on a category in a report and get a menu that allows me to remove it.

All that being said, I highly recommend Quicken ’09. I’m sure, they’ll work out whatever bugs it has and it’s only $40 ($20 discount when I bought it straight from their site). The benefit of having it for the full time it’s supported rather than buying something cheaper more often.

I never tried Quicken for personal finances, because for me it’s very complicated and time consuming, despite the fact that I’m a professional accountant. Instead of this I’m using my own approach for personal finance, like many people using Excel.

I don’t understand how people can say that Quicken is complicated. You push a button to create an Account, and then either type in your transactions manually or download them from the financial institution. How is that hard?

With that being said, I would recommend that people try the online version before buying the software version. The free/online version that is hosted by intuit has most of the same functionality, and it doesn’t cost you anything.

I’m not trusting all my financially-sensitve data on Intuit’s servers.

I suspect Ashtrom’s difficulties with Quicken are *because* he’s a professional accountant. Quicken doesn’t adhere to professional accounting practices everywhere, so it’s quite different from what he’s used to or expects to see.

So let me get this straight… you (well, most people anyway) will give their bank/credit card account information to almost any company on the internet so that they can do automatic payments over the internet, but you don’t trust one of the biggest names in the financial software world? Very strange.

I still recommend the free online version. It is fast and easy to use.

If I pay via credit card, that one card is at risk. There are laws and credit card issuer policies in place to protect me as a consumer, and most credit cards will give you “disposable” one-use numbers to eliminate any risk of the card number being misused.

For the record, I do not do “automatic payment” for most recurring bills I have via those companies so that they can pull the money from my account(s); I push the payments out via my online banking.

If I put ALL my eggs in one basket (Quicken.com), a single security breach can compromise me COMPLETELY. All it takes is a single set of backup tapes with insufficient protection getting “lost” in transit to an offsite facility (and it’s happened to me, I’m on alert for a few more years still).

I’m with Andy – No need to put all your eggs in one basket. I use Quicken religiously, but I use the desktop version.

Side question: Does anyone’s bank charge them to access their accounts via Quicken? I made a new account with Chase and they started dinging me 6.95 a month for Personal Finance Software access. Luckly my main account is so old they just linked the two and I was grandfathered in to free access, but what the heck?

I’m sure Quicken is a good product but if you feel comfortable with online banking I recommend using http://www.mint.com. It has been around for a while and it was recently bought by Intuit (maker of Quicken). It is a great website and user freindly interface.

“If I put ALL my eggs in one basket (Quicken.com), a single security breach can compromise me COMPLETELY. All it takes is a single set of backup tapes with insufficient protection getting “lost” in transit to an offsite facility (and it’s happened to me, I’m on alert for a few more years still).”

I am not putting all of my account credentials in the hands of Intuit.

1) All intuit info: I agree I do not want all info in anyones possession. Heck Is there even a credit report which is correct (insert dry humor..?) Load the program, however, do not store your personal data on the PC. Transfer the data to an external drive or memory stick.

2) Has anyone tried Quicken 2001 yet? I have several friends including professionls, accountants, even those with multiple RE holdings who use the product faithfully.

3) I stumbled across mint.com recently..not sure if I would use this product. Isn’t the software used on
line?

I am using Quicken 2010, and I like it. I have it Quicken since 2005, and I have never had a problem with it. 2010 allows me to connect to more banks than my previous version (2007) did, and evrything seems to work smoothely with it.

I have tried Mint in the past, and it is fine, though nothing spectacular. It was purchased by Intuit a while ago, so now it is just another Intuit product/website. I’m not sure why they purchased it, but I think that they probably did it just to get rid of another competitor. It doesn’t really add anything to their previous software/website offerings (IMO).

Most of the mint.com management is now running Inutit’s consumer products division (Quicken).

I have a feeling that Intuit, by way of the mint.com acquisition & management team, may start pushing people away from desktop Quicken and into the online version, perhaps using desktop Quicken as just a way to enter/view things offline, but if you’ve got a connection available it’ll sync with the online version.

I used to use Quicken for many years. It was really a teriffic program…way back when… but after I had some problems with it and couldnt locate anyone to help resolve it, the last and only opion was to call a techie. Well…that was a nightmare. Ended up talking to some Indian man who had no clue what he was talking about and worse, harder to understand his english and his accent. Why is everything being outsourced to other counries? I closed my account and never went back. I look back now and dont regret it.

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